Trivago merges with Expedia’s Home Away

Johannes Thomas, managing director and chief revenue officer at Trivago says of the decision to offer vacation rentals on the platform. The proportion of travelers who are considering vacation rentals is growing, and the Trivago see this as a strategic opportunity to expand our offering.

Trivago recognizes the challenges in offering both hotel and residential properties.

This travel market chain has plans to relate the technology to personalize the search. It ensures that the customers are not overwhelmed by offers.

Presenting both hotels and alternative accommodations in one search is challenging from a user experience perspective.

They don’t want to perplex hotel bookers who use Trivago, and that is why personalization will play an important role here. They want to only display vacation rentals when they are relevant to the users.

That is why Trivago is thrilled to have Home Away on board, as this allows us to expand testing on how they can build a more tailored user experience.

The news came as Priceline Group Chief Glen Fogel said the company would be looking to extend its footprint in vacation rental. Expedia has been working to treat the ecommerce flow for HomeAway’s 1.5 million listings, of which 500,000 are instantly bookable

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Priceline is investing in artificial intelligence and machine learning to help automate processes like on boarding and reduce the costs of dealing with less sophisticated property owners and more frequent customer contact.

While Trivago’s plans to deploy this new product line in stages may help the company adjust to the more labor-intensive and sensitive product line.

The company is running tests with over 150,000 properties available to users in five of its key markets — Germany, Italy, Canada, the UK, and the US — to be followed by a gradual roll out of readily bookable properties throughout 2018.